


The Morning After

by taichara



Category: Rockman X | Mega Man X
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 09:48:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5329640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taichara/pseuds/taichara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eurasia's fallen, and Dynamo has thoughts on the situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Morning After

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: _'Now it's over, I'm dead, and I haven't / Done anything that I want, / Or I'm still alive, and there's nothing I want to do_

The "mission" -- such as it was -- was over, and Dynamo was at loose ends once more. 

Who needed a body willing to fight for no purpose when there was nothing else left _to_ fight? No one, that's who. Which meant Dynamo found himself groundside, loping listlessly through the burned out, already-decaying shell of a once vibrant, thriving metropolis while the night never ended.

It was sort of funny, in a broken-laughter kind of way; the day had finally broken, but there was no sun, no _light_ in the sky. Nothing but dust and roiling clouds and the crackling storms, the planet telling its pitiful survivors that even the weather was now out of their control. Thunder rolled across an ocean of shattered civilization and lives lost.

All it had taken was just one little nudge. Just a little poke _here_ and a flip of a switch _there_ , a bit of banter and a bit of baiting, and heaven had come crashing down onto the earth.

What was it the humans called it? "Judgement Day" ...?

_Yeah, that's it._

_I guess that was it was, all right. Sigma judged, Hunters judge all the time --_

\-- now _that_ brought up a jolt of memory bitter enough to almost, almost break through the shell of numbness in his head --

_\-- and I guess I did too. Well, damn. Didn't want that kind of responsibility on my head again. I saw what responsibility gives you, and it's called a firing squad ..._

Ooh, ouch, there was that bitter sting again. Dynamo pushed the thought firmly aside and clamped a mental lid over it, pointedly turning his attention to the way the rubble and glassteel shards crunched beneath his feet, the way a handful of twisted wrecks -- weren't those the capital towers, once? -- scratched feebly at the roiling skies like crippled, arthritic fingers.

Did they deserve it? Did the world deserve all this, for its own part in permitting a slaughter -- that so-called "Fourth", ha! joke's on the dead -- to go ahead without a second thought?

Did it even matter?

Sensor suite and mundane sense of smell both pinged suddenly and simultaneously: he'd wandered too close to yet another charnel pit and the stench of death was everywhere. He paused, peered around, and ultimately heaved a half-hearted shrug. Civilians. He'd given a damn, once, before the boredom-inducing clutch of ennui had seized him in its claws ...

_I guess I can leave a pickup notice, anyway. Just drop a little hint here and there._

A few quick swipes of his sabre -- just the merest tip of the burning plasma shaft, actinic in the unending night -- against a toppled stretch of wall, and the first signpost was made. Crude, but effective; he still remembered the shorthand code after all.

That didn't puncture the numbness either, but then, he hadn't really expected it to. But that was fine.

_I'm still here._

_I'm still here, and I guess I care enough about that right now -- and shiny, decorated Mister Hunter, Zero, isn't._

That much Dynamo had managed to confirm, the intel winkled from scattered Hunter survey teams too shell-shocked to recognize him; the _cause_ of death was much less clear. All implicated Sigma, some added X to the mix (as if!), all were in some form of denial. 

_And they all say the blue beacon of hope's still on his feet --_

He stopped dead, and a tiny sound, a muffled, smothered little noise, nearly escaped his lips.

X was still alive. Zero didn't kill him. All those plans, all that plotting, all the fighting and Virus-seeding and baiting and sabotage and _dropping an entire orbital colony on the Earth itself_ and X was still alive.

Alive, and Zero hadn't killed him.

And Sigma himself was dead twice over in some other uncharted charnel pit somewhere. He'd called down _Judgement Day_ and he still didn't manage to make one reploid follow through with some stupid "destiny" ...

The sudden ringing roar of Dynamo's laughter shook the ash sifting through the skies. He laughed til feedback rang through his skull, til he went to his knees in the rubble at the sheer _absurdity_ of it all.

It was the most pointless, most _wonderful_ thing he'd heard, since --


End file.
